


Perchance to Dream

by Snowcleo



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: F/M, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2010-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:05:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowcleo/pseuds/Snowcleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max watches over Logan as he sleeps. Set immediately post "Female Trouble."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Very, very old fic of mine. First one I ever wrote, actually.

His apartment was dark when she returned. Max quietly entered—thanks Manticore for lock-picking skills—and softly walked back to the bedroom.  She still hadn’t recovered from her earlier scare. What would she have done if Logan were gone forever? If not for an old woman’s accident and an overflowing sink… Max shuttered at the thought.

After he had put away the gun—casually, too casually—Logan had told her he was tired and was going to bed. She had pretended to leave, but had climbed up the outside wall and peered back in his window. The bottle of sleeping pills in Logan’s hand had almost made her break through the window, but he only took two before awkwardly climbing into bed. Max stayed, a guardian angel in black, hovering at the window, until his breathing slowed and he was finally asleep.

 

The bottle of champagne was an extravagance, yes, but how often did a girl get to celebrate her own personal liberation from oppression? As the night cooled and the wind blew across the Needle, Max tried to recapture the peace she usually felt when she was high up, looking out over the sleeping city. But her mind kept returning to a 22nd floor apartment, where an empty wheelchair sat beside a bed, waiting for morning, when it would become necessary again.

Before she knew what she was doing, Max found herself at Logan’s front door, not remembering how it was she got there.

 

Now, as she sat in the darkened bedroom and watched him sleep, she began to wonder what her life would be like without Logan. Deep inside her, down beyond the reaches of her soul, was a great yawning emptiness. During the day she could almost forget about it, but through the long, dark, sleepless hours of the night, it reared up like a black hole, threatening to swallow all that was pure and good and light within her. However, the mere thought of blue eyes sparkling mischievously behind wire frames, a cultured voice commenting earnestly on the problems of the world, a smile that promised so much more than she had ever had—these would drive the darkness back down to the empty place and chain it into subservience, at least temporarily. Sometimes when she looked at Logan, the air would catch in her throat and she would feel a lightness that filled every corner of her being and banished the darkness to almost nothing.

Logan moaned and rolled over. Max pulled back into the shadows, the noise jolting her out of reflection. She looked closer at Logan and saw the telltale signs of nightmare. Apparently darkness and terror were not the birthright of Manticore-created genetic super beings only. Briefly she wondered whether she should leave, but she couldn’t turn away from his suffering, not after he had already suffered so much. She slowly sank down to the bed and reached a tentative hand toward him. As she smoothed the hair from his forehead, Logan’s face cleared and he settled back into deep sleep. Max knew she should go, but she couldn’t resist stretching out beside him on top of the blanket. She would just rest there a moment and then she would go.  They seemed to fit together perfectly, as if her head were made for resting on his shoulder and her legs for lengthening out along his.

Max had a brief moment of panic when Logan sighed and wrapped his arms around her, holding her closer to him than she had dared to get, but as she lay there, frozen, she could hear his breathing and realized he was still asleep. She relaxed into the warmth of his body, into the comfort of his arms, the smell of him surrounding her. Slowly, so slowly, the darkness receded and Max slept deeply for the first time in a long time.


End file.
